Forest City 3 Chapter 1 -Familiar Names-

    As I stood at the bus stop I watched as a crumpled dead leaf flutter away from a tree. A cold winter breeze swept beside me making my face flush red. The sky had gone gray which was a sign of snow either that or it was the pollution from the city. The yellow bus made its way around the corner, it had just picked up the students of Nesting Street, where Monty lived. I heard a buzz on my phone, it was from Cobalt.

    Cobalt: 7:58 "Have to drive to school with my mom. Gonna have to do that more often now, live on the other side of town. :/ Getting my license soon."

     I grinned at that text message and proceeded to step onto the bus. Monty waved his hand at me and I realised that we wouldn't get to ride the bus with Cobalt, but that meant that I could sit with Monty or Toni if Monty wasn't here in the morning. I had leant my notebook to Monty over Fall Break in case he got bored and wanted to write about people in school. In fact, he filled up the whole notebook, he handed the notebook back to me in pristine condition. I flipped through some of the notes, he even included some pictures of the people, everything was excellent and organized. It made me want to compare the writing to Clove's journal, which I had neglected reading for the past month.

    One of the page titled Conall Lupin, Monty had put a cross through the phrase English Teacher at FCHS. I winced at the thought that I got someone fired from their job... not even that, Cobalt had to move to his mom's house, which I heard may have been better, sort of. You see, I don't actually know Cobalt's mom, but he has dropped hints that she isn't the most supportive mother. I guess we'll have to find out soon what she is like.

    I decided to break the question to Monty, "So? What is Cobalt's mom like?"

    "You really want to know?" Monty replied, "Okay," now he insisted.

    "I'm just curious, she seemed nice at the uh... meeting," I replied, "She reminded me of Bonnie's mom just a little bit more Cocoabean centric." I thought of a nice Cocoabean coffee warming up the winter months, I always enjoyed winter, mainly because we got to celebrate Clove, her twin, and my birthday except my birthday was in December and their's was in November. I think I might ask Aunt Hazel to take me to Cocoabean this afternoon a latte does sound nice.

    "She used to be a radio host," Monty began, "I remember she would take Cobalt and me to the movies when we were little, though we only watched all of those animated movies which bored us to death, that reminded me of something actually."

    "What?" I butted in.

    "Cobalt and I used to go to the movies with Caspian a lot and when we were done watching the movie, we may or may not have snuck back into another one."

    "Did you ever get caught!?"

    Monty shushed me, "Only one time, it was pretty fun though, then we would go out to the park and um... well..."

    "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," I replied.

    "You see, Mac, Cobalt hasn't ever kept a great record of himself while in Forest City, he has a bit of a reputation that only frustrates his dad even more," Monty explained, "You saw that file and... well... I haven't always been the perfect grade A student everyone makes me out to be."

    "I did see those records, man, that stack of papers looked like ones I would see in a cartoon, I'm curious to know how far back they go," I pondered.

    "As far back as you can imagine, I think some of those papers go as far back as Preschool or maybe even before that in daycare-" Monty stopped, he winced his eyes and began to laugh.

    "You knew him in daycare, I can't even remember the first time I lost a tooth!"

    "And what's even better, we also knew a little someone by the name of Tora Panthera," Monty replied.

    The more and more I heard his name made me think back to my first day of school in fourth grade and Vomit Hair, I shuddered at that name. I feel something familiar about that tiger, but I can't quite name it, maybe we used to go to daycare together.